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2000: Le Bernardin’s Croque-Monsieur

There is a direct relationship between the stock market and the menus in top restaurants, particularly in New York. When the market is doing well, people with money to spend go out to spend it — thereby serving as unwitting patrons of the culinary arts. The best chefs, who tend to be thrifty and conservative in leaner times, use that money to underwrite culinary experiments that stamp an era as boldly as red suspenders or an infinity pool.

In the flush days of the 1980s, for instance, Jonathan Waxman, then the chef at Jams, brought a relaxed attitude to French cooking. He recast classics like blini with caviar, making his pancakes with roasted red pepper, corn and coriander and heaping on not just whitefish caviar but also salmon roe.

The late ’90s produced the endless tasting menu and foie gras as an everyday food. “Everybody was a bit, I think, crazy and inclined to indulge in excess because of the end of the millennium,” Eric Ripert, the chef at Le Bernardin, says.

A participant himself, Ripert came up with a croque-monsieur layered not with ham and béchamel but with something even more indulgent: smoked salmon, Gruyère and caviar on brioche. By the conservative standards of Le Bernardin, serving a sandwich was akin to wearing a Speedo in the dining room.

Ferran Adrià, meanwhile, was pioneering molecular gastronomy, and Thomas Keller was introducing witty dishes like “tongue in cheek” — veal tongue and braised beef cheek — and salmon cornets, which looked like miniature ice-cream cones but were filled with crème fraîche and topped with salmon.

So what can be said of the last few years, when it has seemed as if there has never been so much money in the city? What will the dish of the period be — and perhaps more important, what will it say?

Daniel Humm, the young, skillful chef at Eleven Madison Park, may have the answer with a dish he calls “fantasy of eggs.” Into a hollowed-out eggshell, he drops a gently poached yolk with a small spoonful of caviar and crème fraîche and fills it to the top with a frothy sea-urchin-roe sauce. It’s reminiscent of Alain Passard’s egg filled with cream and maple syrup at l’Arpège in Paris, and yet entirely modern.

Humm says his dish captures “the purity of the ocean.” In fact, it tastes a bit like ocean water wrapped in a frothy veil. The dish is beautiful to look at and simple in its way — there is nothing to announce the unusual technique of poaching the egg yolk, and even the caviar is concealed beneath the froth.

Diners are apparently now so accustomed to having money that they don’t feel the need to broadcast excess. “I think people are interested in clean flavors,” Humm says, “that when you have a dish, you taste each element.” It’s surely no coincidence that Ripert, when asked to describe his cooking today, called it “pure.”

2000: Le Bernardin’s Salmon-Caviar Croque-Monsieur

This recipe appeared in The Times in an article by Florence Fabricant.

4 slices fine-textured brioche or white bread, crusts removed

About 1 1/2 ounces Swiss Gruyère cheese, sliced paper thin

Photo

Credit
Photograph by Tom Schierlitz for The New York Times. Food stylist: Susan Spungen.

1 ounce fresh or pasteurized sturgeon caviar (see note)

2 to 4 slices smoked Atlantic ++or Norwegian salmon

2 tablespoons clarified butter.

1. Put the bread on a work surface. Cover two of the slices with cheese in a single layer. Spread a layer of caviar on the cheese, not quite to the edges. Cover with a slice of smoked salmon, trimmed to fit exactly to the edge of the bread. Top each sandwich with the remaining bread slices.

2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the butter in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Lay the sandwiches in the skillet and cook, pressing down gently with a spatula, taking care that none of the caviar oozes out, until browned on one side. Add the remaining butter, turn the sandwiches over and fry on the second side until toasted. Transfer the sandwiches to a cutting board, slice each in quarters and serve. Serves 2 to 4.

2007: Fantasy of Eggs

By Daniel Humm, the chef at Eleven Madison Park in New York.

The best tool for cleanly removing the narrow end of an eggshell is an egg topper, which stamps a perfect circle into the eggshell that you can lift off with the tip of a knife. The only problem is that the best egg toppers, which are different from egg cutters, are an investment — the Inox professional egg topper is $55 at surlatable.com. If you don’t have an egg topper, simply crack the eggs open gently to remove the yolk intact and use small cups instead of the eggshells for serving.

6 eggs, preferably organic

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 shallot, minced

4 ounces sea-urchin roe

1 tablespoon Cognac

2 tablespoons tomato juice

½ cup chicken broth

1 cup cream

Salt

Cayenne pepper

Juice of 1 lime

2 tablespoons crème fraiche

About 2 teaspoons caviar (see note).

1. Cutting from the narrow end of the eggs, open the eggshells with an egg topper. Separate the egg yolks from the whites, making sure the yolks stay intact. Reserve the whites for another use. Carefully rinse out the shells and set aside to dry.

2. In a small skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the shallot and sweat until translucent. Add the sea-urchin roe and cook for 2 minutes, then pour in the Cognac and, using a long match, carefully light the alcohol and burn it off. Once the flame subsides, add the tomato juice and chicken broth and simmer for 5 minutes. Pour in the cream, bring to a simmer and then let cool to room temperature.

3. Transfer the cooled sauce to a blender and, while holding the lid firmly in place, purée it until smooth. Strain and season to taste with salt, cayenne and lime juice.

4. Heat a pot of salted water to 145 degrees. Carefully lower the yolks, one by one, into the water and, moderating the heat, cook for 6 minutes. Remove each with a slotted spoon and set in a shallow dish. Do not let the yolks touch one another.

5. When ready to serve, froth the sea urchin sauce in the blender or with a hand-held milk frother. Into each eggshell (or small cup), carefully drop a yolk. Place 1 teaspoon crème fraÃ®che on top. Garnish with 1/4 teaspoon or so of caviar and finish with the sea-urchin sauce. Serves 6.